Pete and Karen's Blog

The train journey was uneventful (well, it is a train), but we did manage to catch up on the blog and read about the Scottish Referendum.

Arriving at Prague HL.N is huge, but not like Berlin HBF, but it’s spread out and awkwardly laid out.

Time to find some CZK and head to the Apartment.

Time to leave Berlin and head South East to Prague. It’s been a fabulous couple of days and without doubt, we will be back to explore this beautiful city some more.

Spotlessly clean, extremely well signposted and highly efficient (typically German), Berlin HBF is a truly mahoosive station with 5 levels and every type of shop you can imagine.

As expected, the train arrived early and we are ready to go.

The “best laid plans” is all I can say…….

The weather was overcast, but that didn’t dampen the day at all. We took a different route through the city (check the gallery) and visited a few more tourist spots to include:

- Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
- Berlin Victory Column
- New Synagogue
- Museum Island
- Berlin Cathedral
- Television Tower
- Alexanderplatz Square
- Gendarmenmarkt Square

We succumbed to sore feet and damp weather after eating at BBQ in Gendarmenmarkt Square. Half a roast chicken and chips with the obligatory pint of wheat beer was a mere €9.00… Bargain.

Poor old camera was totally abused. Another 300 photos today and 8.5 miles of walking… hahahaha.

Berlin Gallery 2

Another lazy morning after staying up until 1am uploading images to the galleries and downloading maps for Prague.

The photo count for yesterday was an impressive 282 (way to go Karen) and today promises to be a lighter day for the camera battery.

Grab a coffee and find a comfy chair before you click into this gallery, it will take a while
Berlin Gallery 1

After a lie in and a lazy morning, we are off to see Berlin. Armed with a Pocket Guide to Berlin, a Tripomatic scalable map (on the iPad) and plenty of water and snacks it’s all systems go.

Despite many references to using public transport, we decided to take a stroll, which turned out to be 8.46 miles…. haha.

We managed to see a whole host of the main tourist locations, including:

• Checkpoint Charlie
• Berlin Wall Memorial
• Topography of Terror
• Holocaust Memorial
• Brandenburg Gate
• Reichstag Building
• Postdam Square

  

We found a great little Italian restaurant with good food and, of course, we had to sample a few glasses of wine to accompany our well-deserved dinner.

Our route is shown below:

Berlin ZOB and a train journey on the S-Bahn takes us to the map location. Seems we have the office address, rather than the apartment address (rookie mistake!) and we are a few kms away from the place where we are staying, so a walk around the city to find an ATM and a taxi ride finally gets us to our apartment



The apartment is a converted loft and is beautifully presented (despite the sixty steps up!). A futon bed with two single quilts is brilliant and an idea we will take home to stop the midnight quilt robbery…. haha.

A quick trip to the supermarket and we have our first meal in Germany

Leaving late to get a flight is always a heart racing experience and this time was no different, but fortunately the airport is a stone’s throw from the apartment.

Bags checked in, over cautious through security and newspaper bought, we are ready to board the flight on to the first step of our European adventure.

A whole 25 years since the last visit, around 50 ships sailed up the Thames, literally past our balcony, to start the 2014 Tall Ships Festival.

Across the river in Woolwich we could see Tenacious, the largest wooden tall ship of her kind which has been sailed by a crew with physical disabilities from the Jubilee Sailing Trust.

It was a fabulous weekend that we shared with Karen's parents, filled with firework displays, ships sailing up and down the river, the odd cheeky beer or cider, a walk through the Festival villages at Woolwich and Wood Dock, many, many photos and of course, the obigatory selfie. Haha.

To keep an eye on whats happening on the thames, visit: Totally Thames

The Poppies at the Tower of London commemorates one hundred years since Britain’s involvement in the First World War and each poppy symbolises a British or Colonial military fatality during the war.

I really wanted to visit the Tower to contemplate the enormity of the poppies symbolism and it is a fitting and moving tribute. Truly it is a sea of red.

We plan to revisit every few weeks to see how it evolves, until the last poppy numbered 888,246 is laid in November.

London is a wonderful place to walk around as architecture and water are two of my favourite things to appreciate, particularly in my photographs. So we took a circular walk along the river, down Lower Thames street and across the Millennium Bridge at St Paul’s to Bankside and back along through Southwark, London Bridge and Tooley Street to Tower Bridge. It was a few simple and satisfying leisurely hours spent on a lovely Saturday evening.

http://poppies.hrp.org.uk/

You can visit our gallery here

Welcome to the launch of our blog.  Whilst there is nothing much to see here right now, we hope that this changes over time and that we post lots of entries about the places we visit, whether we would recommend them and links to things we have seen or done.